Curated by Pueblo Historian Teri Fraizer
Teri Fraizer is an artist, historian and educator. Teri taught New Mexico history for Gallup McKinley County Schools for 15 years, directed of the school district’s Indian Education program, and is now the Director of the Gallup Cultural Center. A member of the Laguna Pueblo, Teri is a Southwest history consultant for the United States Department of Education. She also formerly chaired the New Mexico Public Education Department’s Indian Education Advisory Council and is the Pueblo representative for the New Mexico Association for Bilingual Education. Teri is a published author, having contributed to several volumes on Native American history and culture, including National Geographic’s Indian Nations of North America (2010). Additionally, Teri has also written curricula for the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. Teri owns and operates Corn Silk Studio, producing pottery, and coordinates Native dance programs for the City of Gallup and the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial.
Between 1935 and 1936, artist Joseph Roy (J. R.) Willis was commissioned by Gallup’s public schools through the Public Works of Art Project to create a seven-part mural series on Southwestern United States history. Willis’s artworks tell the story of Spanish and American colonization of what is now New Mexico from the early 1500s through the late 1800s from a Eurocentric perspective.
Here, Laguna Pueblo artist, historian, educator, and community leader Teri Fraizer, discusses the four murals related to the history of Pueblo peoples and sets the record straight.
Note: The parenthetical titles used for the paintings in Willis’s mural series were given to the artworks in a July 1936 New Mexico Magazine column by Ina Sizer Cassidy. Following that lead, Teri has provided her own suggested titles.
So much of the history of the Southwest has been written by the victors. Mr. Willis probably painted what he learned in history books, as many history books to date regularly paint a fictionalized or distorted representation of events that occurred. Native peoples are often depicted as “uncivilized,” meaning either as powerless against “progress,” and/or as “savage” in their conduct. On the one hand, the agency of Native peoples is rarely expressed. On the other, the harm done to Indigenous peoples during Spanish colonization is often overlooked. The Pueblo people of New Mexico know the truth. They know Spanish “conquest” was not as simple as that. They also know that much brutality and torture took place. All of that is still embedded in our minds and in our thoughts and prayers. This presentation is a weaving together of Pueblo knowledge with the dominant narrative so that we can better understand not only the history itself, but also history as a process of storytelling.
I call this painting “Healers and Copper Bells.” This is pretty much where the history of the Spanish invasion of New Mexico begins. Cabeza de Vaca and the group shown here (including Estebancio, who we will meet again in the next painting in the series) were survivors of a 1520s shipwreck in what is now Galveston, Texas. The four of them traveled across the Southwest for several years impersonating healers, trying to make their way back to “New Spain.” Along the way, they would pick up items they found. One of those items was copper bells. Copper was a valuable metal in its own right at that time. It also intrigued the Spanish because copper was known to indicate locations where silver could be found as well. When Cabeza de Vaca returned to New Spain he told stories of great wealth, and that prompted further Spanish “exploration.”
I cannot identify the Native people represented in this painting because they are depicted in stereotypical rather than specific apparel, wearing buckskin loincloths. But they appear to be foraging, an activity that many peoples do at sunrise. (I say “appear” because Willis shows only men carrying what we call “burden baskets” on their backs, and burden baskets are typically associated with women’s work; and also because the artist filled the landscape with rabbit brush—not something people would be collecting in great quantities.)
If the sun is rising in the east, then Willis shows de Vaca’s group headed south, seemingly oblivious to the Native people around them, as if they are just passing through on their way home—indomitable survivors. But that is a fallacy. At this point, de Vaca and his crew would have been essentially captives of the Native people, entirely reliant on them for survival and working in their service.
I call this painting “Big Crosses, Little Crosses.” Fray Marcos de Niza was sent north by Spain in the 1530s to find the “Seven Golden Cities of Cibola” the colonizers were convinced existed based, in part, on Cabeza de Vaca’s reports. Estebancio was also part of this expedition.
As the story goes, Fray Marcos sent Estebancio ahead with two crosses, one small, one large. If he found the Seven Golden Cities, Estebancio was to send back the large cross. If there were no riches to be found, he was to send back the small cross. In his search, Estebancio came across Hawiku, the main village of the A:Shiwi, or Zuni, people.
The part of the story that is usually left out is that in his interactions with Zuni people, Estebancio impersonated a “medicine man,” claiming that he could heal people (as he had done with Cabeza de Vaca). At first, the Zuni people welcomed him, and gave him a place right outside of the village to live. When they called him in for his first ceremony, Estebancio pulled out a red rattle. With that, he was immediately taken into custody because the red rattle indicated to the Zuni people that he was not, in fact, a healer. Estebancio tried many times to escape and during one attempt, he was killed.
It is curious that Willis does not depict the Estebancio “incident,” and instead fabricates an imaginary scene of Fray Marcos interacting with Zuni people. Fray Marcos never himself made it to the Pueblo of Zuni. It would seem neither did Willis since the supposedly Zuni people pictured here are dressed in an altogether inaccurate and stereotypical manner and the village painted in the background is not Hawiku—Hawiku is located on top of a mesa.
I call this painting “The Conquistador in Shining Armor.” Despite the failure of his expedition, Fray Marcos de Niza told exaggerated stories about large cities of gold and rivers of silver, prompting Francisco Vasquez de Coronado to make another attempt to find the Seven Golden Cities in the 1540s. And Coronado came at his wealth-seeking mission full tilt.
While at first glance it might look like Willis is acknowledging the brutal truth in his version of events, pitting a charging mass of armor-clad mounted Spanish soldiers wielding guns and swords against a few near-naked villagers throwing stones, a closer inspection reveals Willis’s true intentions. In setting up the scene as a battle between “modern” and “primitive,” between “dominance” and “helplessness,” Willis gives the impression that Spanish conquest was inevitable. In reality, Hawiku is located on top of a mesa and is not easily inaccessible by horse. The view from Hawiku is expansive and extensive and there are many lookouts in and around the village. The villagers would have (1) been alert to the likelihood of intruders given their previous experience with Estebancio, and (2) been able to see Coronado coming well ahead of his attack. They would have been much better prepared than Willis would lead us to believe.
I call this painting “The Last Conquistador.” Juan de Oñate is the cruelest of all the conquistadors, and he is known as the first governor of New Mexico. He financed his own mission, and he made up his own rules. But Willis portrays him as a hero, complete with a white horse. It is also interesting that Willis chose to show Oñate at the beginning of his campaign—it’s an intentional choice to ignore Oñate’s ultimate disgrace and to instead put him on a pedestal.
Oñate’s most infamous atrocities took place at the Pueblo of Acoma. The Acoma resisted colonization, and fought and killed some of Oñate’s men who had been assigned the task of capturing the village. Two of those men were Oñate’s nephews. When word of the killings reached Oñate, he reversed course and returned to Acoma, vowing vengeance.
Oñate’s army was able to infiltrate Acoma. They destroyed kivas (ceremonial spaces) and enacted extreme punishments to make an example of the people. Oñate cut off the hands of all the Acoma women, targeting those with children so that they would be facing a hardship in trying to feed their families. He cut off the left foot of each of the men so they couldn’t escape. Then he rounded up the people to march them to Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo (which the Spanish called San Juan Pueblo) to be tried for their “rebellion.”
I personally cannot imagine having to take a long trek with no foot or no hand and probably no food and very little water along the way. We (Pueblo people) often refer to Oñate as “the beast” because that’s what he called us, and yet it was he who was truly barbaric.
So, to portray him the way Willis does—this is not the portrayal that Pueblo people endured. This painting does not even reflect the reputation that Oñate had in his own time—after a few years, he was recalled from his position by the Spanish government and charged and found guilty of criminal conduct. This painting is a perfect example of rewriting history to validate a certain perspective to achieve a certain aim. I can’t take my eyes off the fact that Oñate is not even carrying a sword in Willis’s depiction.
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